What If You Start Eating Honey Every Day For 30 Days?

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to talk  about what would happen if you started eating  

honey every day for 30 days and honey is very very  popular for starters it's part of our language we  

talk about the land of milk and honey we talk  about things being as sweet as honey and we say  

hey come here honey and honey has been around  for a very long time it's part of our culture  

and it goes back thousands of years it used to be  known as the food of the Gods honey was also the  

original sweetener because our ancestors didn't  have anything else that was really sweet besides  

honey they used to have some occasional fruit but  honey was way way sweeter than that and when I say  

ancestors I'm going to qualify that because people  leave comments so with ancestor I'm not talking  

about your grandpa I'm talking about going back  tens of thousands of years pre historic humans who  

were hunters and gatherers they did not have any  other sweetener and the other thing about honey  

is that it's the first processed sweetener it's  the first processed food really and even though  

it is completely natural in the sense that we find  it in nature and we don't do anything with it the  

bees have processed honey so we start out with a  flower and flower nectar and then the bee comes to  

visit that and sucks up the flower nectar and then  they have enzymes that break down that nectar into  

simple sugars and then they concentrate it and  evaporate it and it turns into honey and these  

little bees they really deserve some respect they  work like nobody else as a result in our language  

again we have the word worker be or busy be to  denote someone who works very hard all the time  

and did you know that in order to make just one  pound of honey which is 454 grams it takes over  

two million flowers so the bees have to make two  million trips to gather nectar to make even just  

one pound of honey and in the process of gathering  all that nectar they travel the equivalent of more  

than once around the world not only that but you  should think about this when you enjoy that little  

jar of honey that a single Bee makes less than  one gram of honey in a lifetime but this goes  

Way Beyond just honey because we actually depend  on bees for our survival they pollinate over 130  

different fruits and vegetables and different  plants and even if you don't eat vegetables or  

fruits if you're a carnivore or you don't just  eat processed food you need need to realize that  

the thing you're eating might depend on the bees  to pollinate their food but even just for humans  

what they pollinate represents about one3 of the  food that we eat so overall we have this idea of  

honey as being Liquid Gold it's very precious it's  a very very good thing but then on the other hand  

with Rising awareness we now know that sugar is  really really bad so how does that fit together  

if honey is good but it's mostly sugar how can  that be so these are some of the things that we're  

going to sort out in this video and I'm going  to base a lot of this on a video I saw because  

it was very representative of a lot of the claims  about honey that you see so we're going to figure  

out which ones are true and which ones are false  and which ones kind of maybe somewhere in between  

so I'm going to show you some screen captures  along the way here to show you that I didn't  

actually make this up that someone else published  this and some of these may seem crazy but they're  

very representative of what people believe and  what's being written out there so first thing  

they said in this video was that everything  in their video was unbiased fact checked and  

reviewed by qualified health professional so that  makes you feel really good up front like very very  

reassuring that this has to be topnotch stuff so  let's take a look so one of the claims was that  

if you eat honey you will sleep better and then  again on their slide they said eating honey right  

before bed May spike your insulin levels and I'm  like that can't be good because if you watch this  

channel you know that that's not something  we're going for but here they mention it as  

a positive and they say that this increased  insulin can stimulate tryptophan which will  

stimulate serotonin which turns into melatonin and  therefore would help you sleep but it doesn't work  

like this trust me if you create even a smidgen  of a benefit which is pretty far reached because  

if you increase insulin you also bind up some of  the tryptophan so it's less available but even  

if it did work you do not want to try to create  health benefits by increasing insulin by creating  

insulin spikes because even if this worked you  would create a dozen bad effects along the way  

so please don't do this and the next claim was  that if you eat honey you will learn faster and be  

more relaxed and the mechanism proposed for this  was that the glucose in Honey is quickly absorbed  

again like before it creates a blood sugar Spike  and an insulin Spike which is not something that  

we're looking for but they suggested that this  will lead to this will cause a powering up of  

your neurons which will ease anxiety and other  psychological disorders now these are pretty  

strong claims but they're completely false or  99.99% false because if you're hypoglycemic and  

you create a blood sugar Spike yes you will feel  better temporarily but that high from the glucose  

Spike will soon drop and be followed by a low and  then you eat again and you got a high and followed  

by a low so it's actually the blood sugar Spike  that creates the low because it creates blood  

sugar roller coasters and what you're really  looking for is stable blood sugar that is how  

you get stable mood and feel good and the way to  do that is to not eat things that Spike glucose  

but rather slow foods like fat and fiber and meat  and when I first saw this I'm thinking hey I bet  

that's why all the kids are so calm when you feed  them a bunch of sugar right and then they made  

a few more claims that we're going to cover in a  little bit here they said that honey will improve  

gut health because it contains prebiotics that you  will lose weight because honey is so full of good  

nutrition in fact a good portion of your daily  nutrition can be found in Honey and we'll get to  

that in the second but first of all I just wanted  to point something out about lists and summaries  

because we're all tempted to look for shortcuts  to learning because we're busier than ever and  

there's a tool that has been develop called AI  or artificial intelligence and I love it and I  

use it but I really want to caution you and be  aware of its limitation because I used the AI to  

do a summary of this video I wanted to get a quick  idea what what are they claiming what are people  

thinking about it etc. and the AI in the summary  told me that honey can be used to prevent botulism  

in infants when in fact it can cause botulism in  infants so if you have just a quick superficial  

understanding then you may read through this and  accept that at first glance you may not stop and  

think hey that doesn't seem right and here one  little word the difference between prevent and  

cause could be the difference of life and death in  a baby so I urge you to take a little bit of time  

to actually understand how the body works and this  is why I do my videos the way that I do because  

superficial knowledge can be very very dangerous  and another way to look at this is the artificial  

in artificial intelligence artificial can also  have a synonym as unreal, bogus, counterfeit  

and it can also mean faked mock phony and sham so  keep that in mind before you hand over your health  

just to some superficial understanding some other  claims that these qualified health professionals  

made in the video was that honey is an excellent  source of energy that you should eat it every day  

and that honey has none of the damaging effects  of plain sugar or white sugar and they said this  

was because honey contains completely different  sugars and this is a very common belief so this is  

something that we really need to understand what  are the sugars in honey so we're going to compare  

honey with sugar and first of all the percentage  of sugar in honey is about 82% because it has some  

water whereas the white sugar it's crystals it has  no water at all or maybe just some humidity from  

the atmosphere so when we compare these numbers  and we go from here we're going to take the water  

out of this so we're going to only consider  that Sugar portion and we're going to adjust  

the numbers accordingly and honey has a number of  different sugars in it and these are not for you  

to memorize it's just to help you understand the  structure and the mechanisms of these so there  

is sucrose there is fructose there's glucose  there's maltose and galactose okay we're not  

going to get super technical here but next time  you hear someone saying something about sugar  

and honey or agave then you'll know what they're  talking about so the most basic sugar molecule  

is called glucose that's what's floating around  in your bloodstream and that's how we measure  

blood sugar or blood glucose and the next one is  fructose which is very similar in many ways it has  

the same number of carbons total the same number  of everything total but the basic ring is five  

and we put an F for fructose so these are the two  most basic ones and they're called monosaccharides  

because it's a single ring of sugar and then  there is another one that is also a six carbon  

ring and it's called galactose and even though  it's a six carbon it actually behaves more like  

fructose it's identical except one of the groups  attached to one of the corners is flipped again  

you don't need to memorize but we need to kind  of get the picture of this but because of this  

flip galactose Works more like fructose in that  it can only be processed by the liver so glucose  

can be used by any cell in the body fructose and  galactose are almost 100% processed through the  

liver and then if we take these sugars again and  we link them up so now we have one glucose and  

we link it together with one fructose then now we  have something called sucrose it's two rings it's  

a disaccharide and there's one more sugar in honey  which is when we have two of the glucose molecules  

so these are two of the same but they're linked  together and now this is called maltose and again  

this one is called sucrose so these are really  all the different sugars in Honey and if you look  

there's really just three different rings but  one acts very much like fructose so again all  

we're really talking about is glucose and fructose  because everything sort of condenses down to that  

in the end so now let's look at how much of these  things are in honey so the sucrose which again is  

this one half glucose half fructose is 1.1 gram  there's very little of that one whereas in white  

sugar it's all sucrose table sugar is 100% And  by definition if you understand that there's one  

molecule of one and one of the other by definition  there's going to be 50% of each so when sucrose  

breaks down it becomes 50% fructose 50% glucose  but in honey it's a little different because it's  

not bound it's floating freely and there's 49.8%  of the fructose versus 50 in table sugar so pretty  

close I would say and glucose is 43.6 versus 50 so  again very very close and the difference here is  

that honey also has something called maltose  which is two of the glucoses but that's only  

seconds away from breaking down into glucose that  the maltose there's two of these so that's seconds  

away from becoming glucose so therefore this sort  of has to be added to the glucose and then there's  

the galactose that we talked about that acts more  like fructose so when we put all of this together  

we want to focus in on here and when we add back  the glucose and the fructose in here we get 54% of  

fructose in Honey and 46% of glucose in honey when  we account for the these odd ones so what that  

means again is once we take the water out of honey  it is 100% sugar just like sugar and it's not very  

different it's off by a few percent but it's  pretty much exactly the same thing and a lot of  

people also say that honey is great for diabetics  it's so much better for diabetics because the  

glycemic index is completely different and no  it's not glycemic index for honey is about 58 to  

compare with about 60 so depending on the source  you find it's going to be off by a few points and  

honey is going to be off by a few percent based  on what flowers they gather the nectar from but  

in the end when you remove the water it's going  to be 100% sugar give or take a a decimal point  

and now with that understanding let's get into  the next claim which is that it can improve gut  

health and here they do have a point so there's  something called FOS or fructooligosaccharides  

and what is that I'm glad you asked so now if we  start off with sucrose and we just start tying  

more of these fructose units this now has turned  from sucrose to a fructooligosaccharide and and  

even though we can break down sucrose we cannot  break down FOS because this is considered fiber  

but it is excellent food for our gut bacteria  and these can get longer as well so typically  

when we talk about fructooligosaccharides we're  talking less than 10 units and another name for  

this or another form that this exists is called  inulin which we extract from chicory root so in  

chicory root as much as 60% of that is actually  different forms of FOS so typically in the chicory  

root there are between two and 60 of these units  so the shortest would be two the longest would  

be 60 on average and then they can process this  and they can separate out the portion that has  

less than 10 and then they often use those as an  alternative sweetener so this is a sweetener it's  

not as sweet as sugar but they add it to different  products because it's a great prebiotic it's food  

for your gut bacteria but it's not calories and  it's not fructose because you can't break it  

down so your bacteria can chop off these little  fructose units but they are earmarked for the  

bacteria they're going to use it themselves  so this does not increase your blood fructose  

levels and the shorter these molecules are so  if it's two or three or four then it's quite  

sweet it's almost like sugar whereas if they get  longer up towards 60 now they're barely sweet at  

all and you can buy this inulin separately and  it's a good Prebiotic you can use the chicory  

root often as a sweetener and if you're making  your own yogurt you can feed the bacteria you can  

make more bacteria in the yogurt by giving them  some extra food they're going to be living to a  

large part from the lactose in the milk but you  can give them a little extra by giving them some  

inulin so FOS is a great Prebiotic food for your  gut and honey contains a fairly large percentage  

so one tablespoon which is 21 grams has5 grams  and that doesn't seem like a whole lot you could  

get a lot more just by supplementing some inulin  but even a little bit still can make a difference  

because you're looking for a variety of these but  FOS can also be found in other Foods so 0.15 grams  

you can find in 60 gram of onion in 25 gram of  garlic which is a couple of decent cloves or 30  

grams of rye and that's the pure rye not the  stuff mixed up with wheat flour but you also  

don't want to limit yourself just to one type of  Prebiotic fiber so there are many other foods like  

Chia is has a massive amount of fibers so there's  1.15 gram almost seven times more Prebiotic fiber  

in just one teaspoon but again it's not FOS  they're different types and that's the whole  

point your gut bacteria are looking for a wide  variety of fiber another thing you often hear is  

that honey will help help you lose weight and in  this video they said it was because honey is so  

full of vitamins minerals and healthy fats and  here's the slide from that video with emphasis  

on the healthy fats in Honey according to the  qualified as reviewed by the qualified health  

professionals on their panel and they also said  along with that that you'll get a good portion of  

your antioxidants and your your nutrients your  daily nutrients so let's go to a site called  

nutrition value. org and look up and see what sort  of nutrients we have in honey so when it comes to  

vitamins the vitamin content of one tablespoon  which is 21 grams of honey we see the different  

nutrients of vitamins here we see 00 1% 0 0 0  so that's the first half of the vitamins second  

half of the vitamins we have 0 0 0 0 0 and zero  well you know I'm not all that impressed I don't  

think I want to trust my nutrition to that sort of  content well maybe it was the minerals they were  

talking about so we go look at minerals and here  we have calcium is zero copper is one and then  

it's 0 0 one 0 0 0 0 0 zero maybe it's the healthy  fats maybe it's all the fats in honey that these  

health professionals were talking about so fat we  have zero saturated fats zero and as you can tell  

in these columns not only is it 0% but even going  down to the third decimal points there not even a  

trace of fat in there there is no monounsaturated  fat there is no polyunsaturated fat in honey so  

I'm just curious based on that a good portion of  of what what are you getting a good portion of  

so the fact is there's really nothing in terms of  nutrition that we can get from honey except sugar  

and this is what's so frightening about the equal  access I love the internet I love the fact that  

YouTube helps distribute these videos but it's  also a platform for ignorant people who can claim  

just about anything they want and when enough  people keep repeating their claims now all of a  

sudden it becomes a common truth so after all that  is there anything good about honey well absolutely  

there is first of all it tastes really really good  humans really love that sweet flavor and if you're  

going to have something sweet in moderation honey  is definitely one of the best things you can have  

secondly even even though I mentioned all the  similarities to sugar honey is absolutely better  

than sugar in every way honey is a live product  it has certain things in it and we'll talk about  

some of the benefits sugar is absolutely dead  it has no benefits no nutrients whatsoever so  

one thing that we know about honey that can maybe  provide some of the anecdotal benefits all of the  

things that people are reporting is the fact that  honey is antibacterial it can kill off bacteria so  

because of this some of the strongest benefits are  probably reports that it can soothe a sore throat  

there's a lot of people that use it as a cough  remedy as a sore throat remedy they give their  

kids instead of cough drops or cough medication  and in that sense I'm all for it if you can have  

something natural to keep medical chemicals out  of your body then and absolutely go for it but  

there's also a large body of anecdotal evidence  anecdotal reports and a lot of these have to do  

with immunity and allergies people say that  after they start consuming honey that their  

Airborne allergies their seasonal allergies go  away people talk about General immunity that they  

haven't had a cold or flu in 20 years since they  started eating honey and I do believe there can be  

something to that I don't think that you should  rely exclusively on honey and I don't think the  

people who have these anecdotal reports I don't  think they do that I think they do have a pretty  

good lifestyle in general but one way that this  can work is that honey contains different chemical  

compounds from the flowers called polyphenols and  these are very mild plant toxins that plants use  

to defend themselves but in very small amounts  they can actually be beneficial and contrary  

to popular beliefs these are not nutrients they  are not for you they are for your gut bacteria  

and they can affect your biome your balance of  bacteria positively and because that has a lot  

to do with your immunity it's possible that  that's a mechanism by which it can actually  

improve immunity and help allergies so even  though I spent a good portion debunking crazy  

claims it was mostly the mechanisms and the  way things are presented they're presented as  

a cure for something and you don't want to think  about it that way you want to think of it as part  

of an overall healthy lifestyle and you want to  understand what kind of claims are crazy and which  

ones may have some validity so if you've had some  benefits if you've noticed some of these benefits  

we just talked about please let us know in the  comments because we'd love to hear more about  

that so how much should you take well it depends  a lot on the person in some of the studies they  

were using up to 70 grams a day before they  saw any noticeable effects and 70 grams a day  

is already way over the limit even the general  recommendations from the USDA limits sugar intake  

at 50 gram and like we said even though honey is  way better than white sugar it's still sugar and  

the quantity is a problem so USDA recommends 50  grams I would say keep it much lower than that  

especially if you have tendency to a fatty liver  or insulin resistance and realize that the vast  

majority of modern people have insulin resistance  and some degree of fatty liver and fructose is the  

biggest problem for a fatty liver and honey has  54% of that so again if you're insulin sensitive  

you can have a certain amount if you have insulin  resistance you want to really keep it down so I  

would probably suggest that you eat less than  20 grams a day so that's about one tablespoon  

of honey and again if you have some metabolic  issue then that is 20 G total that is not in  

addition to ketchup and muffins and barbecue sauce  that's the total so I don't think we need to be  

absolutely fanatical about sugar I don't think  everyone has to be zero in every regard but we  

need to understand these numbers so we can keep it  in proportion that if you eat 20 gram of this and  

then you eat barbecue sauce and ketchup and all  the other stuff before you know it you're up to  

70 80 90 grams a day anyway and that will give you  or maintain that fatty liver so that said a lot of  

people claim that honey will fix diabetes and I  really don't see how it would do that I think if  

you cut out all other sugars and you stay low  carbs I think that you could probably have up  

to 20 grams a day and still have good progress  with reversing your diabetes and there may even  

be some components in the honey that will assist  you but more is not going to be better and if you  

want to use honey if you have a sore throat or  a cold you want to understand that it probably  

works best as a topical so you want to take the  honey straight and you want to use small amounts  

and let it dissolve in the mouth and swallow it  slowly and use a tiny little bit several times  

a day so maybe like a half a teaspoon three to  four times a day or maybe even less even more  

frequently and one more thing that most of the  beekeepers and most of the people who stay up on  

this and most of the people who use honey as part  of a healthy lifestyle they really emphasize that  

the honey must be raw if it's been pasteurized  if it's been processed now they have killed off  

and removed just about everything that would give  you any benefit uh as far as health and that also  

means that this very popular idea of putting  honey into a hot tea or hot coffee is probably  

not a good idea that you're probably killing off  a lot of the benefits so if you do that you want  

to make the coffee or the tea and let it cool down  to approximately body temperature and then you can  

put the raw honey in and still have those benefits  but there's one more thing that you could try if  

you want to get some of the benefits without all  the sugar and that's something called propolis  

or propolis I'm not sure how that's pronounced  but bees really make two things they make honey  

which is their food reserve and then they make  this propolis which is their it's a building  

material essentially and they use it as spackling  or mortar to seal up their beehive and it contains  

a lot of the same compounds that are potentially  beneficial as what the honey has in it so you  

could take that as a supplement and not have any  of the sugar with it I'd love to get some reports  

even if they're anecdotal from you you can leave  the comments but when you read those and when you  

leave them keep in mind who are the people who  use honey on a regular basis especially the raw  

honey and I would contend that there are different  that people care about their health at different  

levels so the people who eat honey are probably  more into a natural lifestyle than someone who is  

wolfing down energy drinks and playing video games  for example I would pretty much bet money on that  

so if you give us an anecdotal report please also  tell us your overall view of health and and other  

things that you're doing so we can help people  put that in perspective because those people  

into the more natural Lifestyles they probably  move more they probably get more fresh air they  

probably appreciate more Whole Foods they're  not just seeking out honey instead of sugar  

they're probably looking for better quality foods  overall and they're probably getting a whole lot  

less sugar not just by replacing sugar with honey  but they're probably eating way less sweet stuff  

overall and as a result they probably also eat  way less processed food so they're keeping a lot  

of bad stuff out so if you would please include  that if you leave a comment so we can all kind  

of get the bigger picture. If you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one, and if you  

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